If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

AgentChronon, I agree with you a lot (if not fully... I can't remember what all you've said =P) And yeah, the "gay" thing is fairly annoying, but meh, at least he didn't use anything worse.

Originally Posted by AgentChronon

I'm sorry, but usually the second thing I do when I go to a site is (after I browse the content) click on about half of the affiliates. I've been to every single one of TCoD's affiliates and I have become a fan of a lot of them.

TOTALLY AGREED! Lol, I love checking out other sites and stuff. People do click on affiliate links, no matter what people say. Does everybody? No. But a lot do.

Yeah, if they only get 100 hits, (not saying that's small, but compared to other sites) I wouldn't expect to get many clicks to my site. BUT say, if you affiliated with Serebii, then you're bound to get loads of hits.

All lies.
It's hard to get 100 unique hits per day,and I'm lucky I get 50-60 unique per day. And who do you think I am? Some kind of *******? I used a link checker to see how much hits you gained and it showed you only recieved "10" per day.

Originally Posted by Trainer Rachel

Yeah, if they only get 100 hits, (not saying that's small, but compared to other sites) I wouldn't expect to get many clicks to my site. BUT say, if you affiliated with Serebii, then you're bound to get loads of hits.

That isn't logic enough,and what's the chance of being affiliated with a cocky webmaster? None.

But the problem is, sites tend to only affiliate with sites the same size as them. Of course if you affiliate with Serebii you are going to get loads of hits. Is Serebii going to affiliate with you? No. Moot "what if" questions are useless :/ Unless you have a specialized site (hello, you've found your niche which is the "theme" of this topic) the only sites that will affiliate with you are going to be other new small sites. No popularity + affiliation with sites that get no popularity =/= popularity. The amount of hits you get from affiliation does not justify cluttering up your website with buttons. Now, I affiliate with Bulbagarden for other reasons than hits but out of the ~2,500,000 page views my site has had this month so far 8,292 have come from Bulbagarden. There are other ways to get visitors to your site than affiliation, don't waste your time with buttons ._.

[20:54:24] Serebii: switching is cheap
[20:54:42] Serebii: its as cheap as ubers

95% of Serebii.net does not understand competitive battling. If you're one of the 5% that do, then don't waste your time putting this in your sig - head straight to Smogon.

Exactly,what chaos said. Affiliation isn't the only way to gain hits/visitors to your site. Placing 100 buttons on your site is going to slow everything down more. You can advertize your site on plugboards,saybox's,sigs,etc.

All lies.
It's hard to get 100 unique hits per day,and I'm lucky I get 50-60 unique per day. And who do you think I am? Some kind of *******? I used a link checker to see how much hits you gained and it showed you only recieved "10" per day.

Hmm... that's weird my site has been up 45 days and has over 3000 hits so that would be 66.6666666666666666666 etc. per day... well it wasn't quite 100 but it wasn't 10.... and for the first 14 days I didn't advertise it at all so I think it's about 100 per day I know one day I got 300..

On the other hand it's not counting unique hits, just front page hits like TCoD, so that would be less.

It's my site, fear it.

Less than %.001 of all people on Serebii are named AgentChronon. If you are one of that %.001 percent, copy and paste this into your sig (started by AgentChronon)

Buoysel= awesome. It will always be that way. Forever. If you think you are a bigger Buoysel fan than me, PM me and I will correct you.

I know that affiliation isn't the only way to get hits. I agree that you should also advertise your site and stuff, but if you were to get the right affiliates (yes, just accept this "what if" question) there's no denying that it'd help.

I thought the theme was discussing what you had posted and agreeing and dissagreeing with it. Oh and I 100% agree with the niche thing (although it's a bad metaphor...). I spend most of my time trying to think of a "niche."

Although the theme seems to be now Faltzer and I arguing...

Last edited by AgentChronon; 31st July 2006 at 6:52 PM.

It's my site, fear it.

Less than %.001 of all people on Serebii are named AgentChronon. If you are one of that %.001 percent, copy and paste this into your sig (started by AgentChronon)

Buoysel= awesome. It will always be that way. Forever. If you think you are a bigger Buoysel fan than me, PM me and I will correct you.

They weren't unique hits... they were hits. I'm not lying dude go to my site and scroll all the way down.

Also please don't say I jacked up the number because I started at zero and when the site was on hiatus for three days and I didn't have the counter up I added 35 to the counter which means I estimated about 11 hits per day and I am almost positive it was more.

It's my site, fear it.

Less than %.001 of all people on Serebii are named AgentChronon. If you are one of that %.001 percent, copy and paste this into your sig (started by AgentChronon)

Buoysel= awesome. It will always be that way. Forever. If you think you are a bigger Buoysel fan than me, PM me and I will correct you.

1. This is the absolute most important thing. Nobody cares about your ridiculous PHP script that lets you specify which 'style' you want a layout to be. It's cool for proof of concept to help you learn, but it has no point on a real site. Nobody cares about your 30 affiliates each getting 30 page views a day. This isn't going to attract you attention. Neither is your 600 page links on the site that lead to your default 404 page of 'I HAVENT MADE THIS YET/COMING SOON WITH ::MyGenericPokemonSite v4// SEE YOU ALL NEXT NOV!'

None of that is going to get you traffic. You know what gets you traffic? A _niche_. Find a niche for your site- something to hype it, something that nobody else has. Give your users a reason to come to your site; anyone can go to Serebii and see the latest headlines for anime. Don't be just another pebble in the gravel road. Instead, be some sort of brick! A car going down a gravel road isn't going to be stopped by your pebble. It's going to keep trekking on to its destination, the sites everyone else go to. So be a brick and stop the car dead in its tracks. Get them to look at your site first before they go to Serebii or such.

Yeah, that was a bad analogy. I was totally feelin' it though. The point is, you need something to make your site unique. My site's niche is competitive strategy to Pokemon. My users love my site because they know they can't go anywhere else for competitive strategy. It targets them. There is no other site on the internet that can MORE than fill a 128 man tournament in less than 24 hours.

I always hate to see PHP scripts relating to switching a layout to what you want. And when you look at the script,you'll see they didn't write the script. They found it on a google search.

I despise websites with 404 pages as well,and even if they have content,it's just all generic copied right from Serebii. You'll have to live with seeing it,because people now a days don't like to write content.

2. DON'T LET YOUR FORUMS BE YOUR MAIN ATTRACTION. The forums are there to unite and give your users a sense of community. If you don't have a niche yet, you aren't going to have users. "My invisionfree.com board" is not a niche for attracting views. I could go to any site for a forum system. You didn't make it. It's not unique to your site. Why should I visit YOUR board and not anyone elses? I don't even like your site, it has no content, focus, vision. Just a forum system that you didn't make.

If you do have a forum, don't make this fatal mistake: making more forums than you have users. I see this all the time- 10 registered users, 100 forums of bullshnitey. Good job, you managed to make a section for every possible topic anyone could ever think of. Too bad you only have 10 members and with so many forums, they are going to have no clue where to post in. Keep it simple. When I started Smogon in May 2004, I had -2- forums. A general chat forum with a witty title, and a General Pokemon forum. I also got 1500 registered users in half a year. Even after purging inactive users, we at this time are 4 members away from 2000, with around 50-80 people viewing the forums at the same time (70 at this time of writing).

This ticks me off. Why did you have to post this piece of paragraph when you post a link to your forum in every main page of your categories. Example:

Haha And some people like forums to be their main attraction. You should accept that too, Chaos, cause at least that way they aren't totally copying Serebii or all your other main sites. It all depends on preference, and what their "niche" is.

As for me, I run one of the biggest Pokemon websites on the internet, the only forums bigger than mine that deal with only Pokemon are Serebii and PokeCommunity, I run a NetBattle server that gets over 100 people on concurrently and I have a willing and active community of people to help me out. I've been doing HTML, CSS, PHP, and even though unrelated to web design, C++ for around 7 years now. My site gets 2,200 unique, 35,000-40,000 page views, and 250,000-350,000 hits a day. I know exactly what I'm talking about.

Originally Posted by chaos on the internet

My site can do strategy better than yours. Its what we are known for. Just accept it :/

I'm trying to make my site a complete nex gen pokémon resource. If I only focus on D/P and PBR I think I have a chance, as that's pretty limited. Sure, it'll decrease my hits and such, but I'll be able to manage it.

I always hate to see PHP scripts relating to switching a layout to what you want. And when you look at the script,you'll see they didn't write the script. They found it on a google search.

Uh, when you look at the script? You can't look at PHP scripts. I think you're confusing it with Javascript.

Chapter 64: Hide and Seek
The story of an ordinary boy on an impossible quest in a world that isn't as black and white as he always thought it was.(rough draft of the remaining chapters finished for NaNoWriMo; to be edited and posted)

Morphic(completed, plus silly extras)
A few scientists get drunk and start fiddling with gene splicing. Ten years later, they're taking care of eight half-Pokémon kids, each freakier than the next, while a religious fanatic plots to murder them all.

It is not possible to view anybody's PHP code. If you can view the source and see whether somebody got a script on Google or not, it's Javascript, not PHP. I don't even know what the heck you're talking about by "Most source codes put the PHP code in a PHP file."

I thought I managed to tell you that a while ago, but apparently not. v.v

Chapter 64: Hide and Seek
The story of an ordinary boy on an impossible quest in a world that isn't as black and white as he always thought it was.(rough draft of the remaining chapters finished for NaNoWriMo; to be edited and posted)

Morphic(completed, plus silly extras)
A few scientists get drunk and start fiddling with gene splicing. Ten years later, they're taking care of eight half-Pokémon kids, each freakier than the next, while a religious fanatic plots to murder them all.

I agree with your tutorial completely. You made a good point on the visual aspects of a site such as the affliate section being the area that most ignore. I also admire the fact that you mentioned the annoyances of javascript. The second I see snowflakes or hear background-music (save for sites that are directed to music), I immediately leave the site. Also, you've made wonderful points on how to create a sucessful community, which is something I don't see very often. People go about it the entirely wrong way, with flashy colors and dancing bananas to attract visitors. It's nice to see someone with experience helping out the community. Hopefully others learn from this and the on-going rampage of badly done sites might end.

Even though I'm a very busy person, I like helping people out. Sorry if the advice here seemed harsh. It's sometimes hard for me to explain concepts without being a jerk about it.

Sometimes the only way to get your point across is to wake people up by being harsh.